Still curious, we tried the T G & Y store in Rockledge. Guy Denny, the acting manager, said the chain was named after three men, ''But I'm not sure just how to spell their names.''

''I think it was Tomlin, Grogan and Young, something like that. But they have not been connected with us for years.''

Isn't it amazing how much you learn when you start with just one simple little question?

Saucy secrets. Ernestine and Danny Harrison of Titusville try their best to make fellow West Virginians -- and others -- feel at home in Brevard.

On the menu of their Sunshine Danny's Haystack Family Restaurant at Miracle City Mall are: West Virginia chili dog, West Virginia country barbecue, West Virginia BLT, West Virginia beefburger and cheese baconburger, West Virginia chicken and dumplings and a whole mess of West Virginia ''kountry kookin' hot platters.''

Danny, a country-Western recording artist himself, wrote ''What I Feel in My Heart,'' the big Jim Reeves hit several years ago.

The restaurant's hot dog and barbecue sauce recipes are his other special, and secret, hits.

''Mine is the chicken and dumplings,'' says Ernestine. ''I have written down my recipe but it never seems to come out right for anybody else. I never measure anything so when I tell somebody else how, it doesn't work.''

She says people ask if their hot dogs also come from West Virginia. They don't. ''But there are a lot of people here from back home and we like to cater to them.''

The Harrisons ran the Greentop and Navaho drive-ins in Logan, W.Va., for 20 years, just in case you transplanted Mountaineers didn't know.

Dog days. Angus the 8-month-old miniature beagle is beginning to wear out his welcome at Nancy and Mike Wood's home in Melbourne. He tends to eat too many things not meant for him.

In the short time they've had him, he has, among other things: jumped up on the dryer and tried to swallow a fishing lure on a shelf; opened a bag of chocolate chip cookies, helped himself to some and squirreled away the rest in hiding places throughout the house; and devoured most of a birthday cake belonging to Heather, 10.

''He dragged the cake from the kitchen to a bedroom, Tupperware cake saver and all, and it was snapped shut,'' Mrs. Wood said. ''He opened it and had it upside down.

''I was out of town when my husband and children got him. He was for Justin, 7, because Heather and Curt, 14, had already had pets. Now Justin is getting a persecution complex. He wonders what he has done to deserve this.'' Ma Bell memories. Cliff McNulty of Melbourne, a state representative 20 years ago, has a Brevard area telephone directory for 1934-35 and it has only about 20 pages.

''It includes all of Melbourne, Eau Gallie, Cocoa, Titusville and Vero Beach,'' he said.

''Cocoa Beach was only a few fishing shacks then, and there was absolutely nothing on Merritt Island, except Angel City, which was a tough little fishing community.

''Most of the phone numbers had just two digits.''

And who had heard of Palm Bay? Or General Development, for that matter.